By Gayle Keck
Welcome to our nation-state. It is 43 feet long and 23 wide — a bareboat catamaran, if you prefer. We are plying the Mediterranean coast of southern Turkey, wandering at will among bays and coves, tying up where we like, doing whooping cannonballs off the bow. Our chartered craft flies the French flag, [...]

By Cristina Topham
As the new chef aboard a 120-foot sailing yacht, I learned quickly that feeding a crew of six South African sailors is no small feat. Like a pack of roving hyenas, they’re always hungry and will eat anything in sight. Nothing is safe. I had made a lamb curry which was intended for [...]

by Cecilia Worth
Except for the gangway’s frenzied chunk-chunk against the flank of the anchored ship, the Antarctic blizzard furies around us in eerie silence. The captain of our converted ice-breaker has sought shelter in the flooded caldera of Deception Island, an ancient volcano north of the Antarctic Peninsula. Despite this safer anchorage, the Polar Star [...]

By Laurie McAndish King
Jim was hesitant right from the start.
“Cape Tribulation? Wilderness Area? No way!”
Our travel agent had provided a bright, glossy brochure of the Bunyip Lodge, and I talked my husband into going along to this eco-resort in northern Australia. “Eco-tourism” sounded so romantic: waking to the trill of morning birdsong, viewing exotic animals [...]

By Michael Shapiro
What’s the worst that could happen, I asked myself, when an attractive young woman I’d met in Tiananmen Square invited me to dinner. Three hours later I was being held against my will in a dimly lit ground-floor room many miles from the heart of Beijing. I didn’t know where I was, a [...]

By Chris LaRoche
It’s late November in Montana. Days before Halloween, my long-distance girlfriend dumped me in broken but adequate English over a crackling phone line from Germany. For a month I moped about like a sad puppy, crying in my coffee and failing exams in morpho-phonology. Finally, I decided it was time to get over [...]

By Laurie McAndish King
The first time I tracked lions, it was from the relative safety and comfort of a large—although open—Land Rover, with a loaded rifle situated handily next to the driver. At that time our guide had assured us that as long as we didn’t wear brightly colored clothes, make noise, or stand up, [...]

By Simon Hodgson
Go East, Young Man
There are no crocodiles in my creek. For minutes I stare in silence at the brackish water before me, hoping, dreading, to see air bubbles. Nothing. Nothing but three men in the Borneo jungle.
The forest is both loud and quiet as we walk towards the lake. I can hear my [...]

By James Michael Dorsey
The blowing sand rocks our Land Rover as we reach the outskirts of Timbuctou.
Mahkmoud leans over the steering wheel and peers into the hazy lemon yellow that fills our windshield. There is no horizon between earth and sky and I wonder how he can continue to drive with no reference points, yet [...]

By Cameron McPherson Smith
Another big Pacific swell came up fast and silent, moonlight flashing on its face. Hurrying east, it lifted and then dropped our sixty-foot raft with the smooth motions of an elevator. I caught my stomach and adjusted a steering plank. The glowing compass revolved slowly as the raft pointed back on course. [...]